Linkbar

Wednesday, 26 July 2006

I’ve sometimes wondered how these blogging memes originate—so I thought I’d try to start one myself. If you’d like to participate, just post your own responses to these questions and tag five people. Welcome to the One Book Meme!

1. One book that changed your life: Augustine, Confessions (398 CE)2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (1988)3. One book you’d want on a desert island: John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667)4. One book that made you laugh: Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1952)5. One book that made you cry: Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (2005)

6. One book that you wish had been written:Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics V/17. One book that you wish had never been written: Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner (1946)

8. One book you’re currently reading:John Updike, In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996)

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (2006)

10. Now tag five people: In the hope of getting this meme started, I’ll tag anyone who happens to read this!

One book that changed my life: Manning Clark - A History of Australia (especially vols. one and two)

One book I’ve read more than once: Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

One book I’d want on a desert island: Richard Flanagan - Gould’s Book of Fish

One book that made me laugh: Sean Condon - Sean and David’s Long Drive

One book that made me cry: C. S. Lewis - The Last Battle (the end bit)

One book I wish had been written:My Life by Boorong of the Cadigal nation. Boorong grew up in the area that stretches between the South Head of Sydney Harbour to the Cooks River. She was about fifteen when the British established a colony at Sydney Cove. When, in April 1789, a smallpox epidemic swept through the Indigenous population of the Sydney region she fell sick and was brought in for treatment in the camp hospital. Several of her relatives died of the disease and so she went to live with Reverend Richard and Mary Johnson for more than a year. She later ran away and rejoined the remnants of her tribe. No one knows what happened to her, or much at all about her experience of life, the land, of colonisation.

For very different reasons, another book I wish had been written is The Spirit and the Soil: Land, Protestantism and the Colonisation of Australia by Meredith Lake.

One book I wish had never been written:Can't answer that one. Almost everything - even things that are grossly misleading or hateful or destructive - can be interesting as an historical source. To some degree I'm glad things get written down.

One book I’m currently reading:Neale Donald Walsh - Conversations with God - my first real foray into new age literature

One book I’ve been meaning to read:John Gascoigne - The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia

Oh, that's what "tag" means. I was getting confused with the kids game where you give someone a gentle slap and say, "Tag, you're on it!" Good job I didn't just try tagging five random people in that sense.

1. Book that changed your life: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare2.Persuasion by Jane Austen3.Book you'd want on a desert island:My entire library. Who knows how long I'll be stranded? The Bible4. Book that made you laugh: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons5. Book that made you cry: Mary Shelly's Frankenstein6. Book that you wish had been written: John Grisham’s The Client7. Book you don't enjoy: Stupid love stories8. Book you are currently reading: Ireland by Frank Delaney9.Book you've been meaning to read: Cryptonomicon10. Book you remember as a real page-turner: A Rift in Time by Michael Philips11. Non-fiction books that you have enjoyed: Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization12. Children's books your family has loved: Love You Forever by Robert N. Munsch

Great meme!1. One book that changed your life: Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard2. One book that you've read more than once: The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis3. One book you'd want on a desert island: The Divine Comedy by Dante4. One book that made you laugh: I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson5. One book that made you cry: Fifty Acres and a Poodle by Jeanne Marie Laskas6. One book that you wish had been written: The Truth about Truth by Can't Think of a Suitable Author7. One book that you wish had never been written: Phenomenologie des Geistes by G. W. F. Hegel8. One book that you're currently reading: Philosophical Ethics by Stephen Darwall9. One book you've been meaning to read: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

1. One book that changed your life:Theopolitical Imagination by William Cavanaugh. Its always the small things that change our worlds.

2. One book you’ve read more than once:The Chosen by Chaim Potok.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

4. One book that made you laugh:Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. This is hands down the funniest book I've ever read.

5. One book that made you cry:The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.

6. One book you wish had been written:Those other stories that the author of the Gospel of John alludes to.

7. One book you wish had never been written:So many choices! There was a debate between Grudem and Eldredge, but then John Piper's Desiring God won out.

8. Book(s) your currently reading:Dynamics of Theology by Roger Haight and Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory by Bruce Morrill.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf. I've been putting if off for years, well that and Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday by Alan Lewis.